A year of honours for File On 4

Ian Muir-Cochrane, Michael Robinson and David Ross

File On 4 has been honoured by the radio industry's most prestigious awards ceremony winning a bronze award in the best News and Current Affairs Programme category in the 2008 Sony Radio Academy Awards 2008.

In a year when BBC Radio 4 was named the UK's best radio station the judges praised the station's flagship investigative series.

This [File On 4] is current affairs documentary-making at its best

Sony Judges 2008

The citation read: "This programme stands out for its achievements in breaking important stories, often itself generating news.

"The judges felt that this is current affairs documentary-making at its best."

Earlier this year Michael Robinson's examination of the British mortgage market earned File on 4 the 2007 radio award from the Wincott Foundation.

The programme broadcast last September explained the concern over unchecked borrowing in light of the difficulties affecting the American housing market.

File on 4 also contributed to business editor Robert Peston's award for his reporting of the Northern Rock crisis, for which he received the business news/current affairs prize.

Northern Rock

The Wincott awards were instituted, in 1970 in memory of the leading financial commentator of his generation, the Harold Wincott.

Robert Peston's programme on the crisis also won the Work Foundation's award for Radio Programme of the Year.

The judges said, "This was the hardest category to judge. But the winner is File on 4 for its terrific special on the Northern Rock crisis.

"This programme was very well presented by Robert Peston and contained a sensational interview with Mervyn King which sent markets aquiver and politicians panicking."